by Anne Rice
January was bad.
February, before its first week was out, became unbearable.
For three days, four, five, the lash of a North Sea storm had made going out of doors unthinkable. Neville had passed his time writing long self-pitying letters to people he had imagined were his friends, while the level in the brandy bottle went down as fast as the inkwell. He had had an acknowledgment or two, but no replies—none that could properly be called replies. Last night had been especially awful; struggling to sleep despite the gale he had heard a slate break free that smashed into the cast-iron gutter underneath and cracked it so cascades of water poured across his bedroom window. He could envisage pound after precious pound of his exiguous inheritance being washed away, drained away …
But there would be more, there could well be quite a lot, once he gained the right to sell this loathsome house! Emily must not refuse him! (How could she want to?) Hopper must not stop her accepting him! (How could he be bribed not to?) Brandy-sodden chaos swamped him into sleep at last, and dreams wherein he roamed the rooms and passages of this his mother’s home that somehow also were the entrails of a woman, ever and again reaching a dead end beyond whose wall he heard the clink of glasses and the voice of friends …
He woke red-eyed from crying, and resolved on deeds.
He had long known where Captain Hopper lived, though he had never been to the house, prevented perhaps by some half-remembered childhood injunction to the effect that being “too forward” was sure to ruin a suit. Had the same moral been drilled into Emily? If not, why had she refused even to come and look at the pretty things he had ready for her? He had reached the stage of convincing himself that Mrs. Peck must have turned her away and been forced to eat humble pie to stop her giving notice. How could he find a replacement housekeeper?
Until Emily took over, of course.
He shaved with care; he chose his finest silk shirt and a silk tie that Jimmy Jimenez had sent for Christmas, still not acknowledged with a thank-you note, for the prospect of being “taken over” by Jimmy filled him with repugnance and he wasn’t sure he could endure it even as an ultimate recourse. He bid defiance to the weather with a fawn topcoat and a pale gray trilby and a malacca cane by way of walking-stick, and set out to explain to his intended what she clearly could not yet have understood: the glamorous future she might look forward to were she only to say one single necessary word.
And had to turn back from the threshold for a tumbler of brandy before he could screw himself to the sticking point.
Marriage! Babies stinking of urine and sour milk! Ugh!
He wished his belly were not rebelling against the drink he had taken. He wished he didn’t so detest this land of his birth. Above all he wished in his heart of hearts that he had never been forced into taking any decision more significant than to say to someone else, “Yes please.”
Emily was in that supremely enviable position. Why had she not already given her consent?
He stood before Hopper’s home trying not to see two of its front door. It was the last in a row of stone-built cottages, blacker and uglier than the forbidding house he could not bear to think of as his home, only as his mother’s. Surely no one in his—in her—right mind could not but want to flee from such a mean place!
There was an iron knocker. To it he raised a fastidious kid-gloved hand, the one with which he was not attempting to save his hat from departing on the wind. His head was full of all the phrases he had spent these past weeks rehearsing, until they were so polished they surely could not fail of their effect …
No answer?
Dismayed, he knocked harder, hearing echoes within as though the cottage were abandoned. He stepped to its sole street-level window and peered in through a blur of streaming rain.
No, not abandoned. Just empty. A fire smoldered on the hearth, a kettle hanging on a jack above. However, there was little furniture—a table, a settle, a couple of chairs, a chest, a rack of fire-irons—so that the room gave back the knocker’s sound effectively intact.
But on the table lay two books: one shut, the other open.
Suddenly Hopper’s hymn-tune darted back to mind. Was one of those the hymnal it came from? Neville felt a need to know, inconsequential as an itch.
Returning to the door, on impulse he lifted its latch. Against all common sense—for there was an iron lock—it swung inward in the grip of the gale and virtually dragged him with it. Gasping, striving to force it shut behind him, he trod on coir matting. Had there been, as he was expecting, bare flags, he could well have lost his footing, for rain preceded him over the threshold.
Wiping his eyes, he looked warily around. Some at least of “Captain” Hopper’s claims seemed to be borne out, for on the whitewashed walls hung artifacts that Henry Haines would have been impressed by: African and Caribbean ritual masks, along with knives and spears and articles whose purpose was unguessable. But, as nearly as he could work out on the basis of what of Henry’s knowledge had rubbed off on him, the collection was unsystematic, a ragbag of what a common sailor (“not exactly officer class!”) might have haggled for in foreign parts and kept to ornament his home when he retired, heedless of what significance their makers ascribed to them.
He approached the table that bore the books. Ah. The one lying open was indeed a hymnal. Did it contain—?
But abruptly it dawned that the answer to a more important question lay within his grasp. Were there two bedrooms upstairs? Or at any rate two beds?
Tipsily he strove to decide whether it would be better to take on, as he had earlier thought of it, a pretrained girl, or whether as a prospective bridegroom he should ask a discount for accepting damaged goods.
And his thoughts were derailed by the reopening and rapid closing of the door, as surely as an express hitting logs and rocks.
He turned, frantically framing lies, to see Hopper peeling off the seaman’s oilskin coat he wore against the filthy weather. Emily hung it on a wooden peg before removing her own coat. What she had on underneath, along with her boots and gaiters, seemed just as sodden.
Intrusion? Trespass? Such concepts pole-vaulted across Neville’s mind. He tried not to look at Emily.
“Take your coat off. You can hang it there. Sit down.” Hopper kicked a chair around for himself and pointed at another—the other. Here, master of his own house, he had discarded deference. “Tea!” he added in a sudden roar. “And a bottle!”
The girl disappeared, presumably to a larder. Meantime Neville dumbly did as he’d been told. He had been caught in flagrante, about to … Well, best not think of that. He was grateful that Hopper the ex-bo’sun had not already laid into him with a marlin-spike—whatever such a thing might be, but it sounded appropriately nautical. So what did this extraordinary reception portend?
“I been expecting you,” Hopper said at length. Teeth stained from tobacco and rotten from sweets showed briefly among his beard. But in no sense did the expression constitute a smile.
“Why?” Neville forced out.
“Ah, the whole village knows, the way you carry on. Well, I don’t mind. Mark you, you’ll have to pay for what you want. But that’s the way o’ the world.”
Before Neville’s fuddled brain could sort out the implications, Emily had returned with the makings for tea. Numbly he waited while she poured hot water, stirred, poured again.
Which done, she retreated to the settle and became immobile.
She had also fetched a bottle of near-black glass. Giving no sign that he would brook refusal, Hopper uncorked it, releasing the powerful half-sweet scent of dark rum.
“You being as is well known a drinking man,” he said with a horrible affectation of connivance, of intimacy, “you’ll appreciate a drop o’ this on so wintry a day.”
And spilled generously into their mugs. Neville wondered wildly whether he ought to object to the omission of Emily. But a teetotal wife, after all, would be cheaper …
Hopper was sketching a toast. Neville duly gulped
, hoping the brew would not clash with the liquor he had already ingested. Silently he cursed his mother, as he now did daily, but tried not to let it show on his face.
The mixture did no immediate harm.
After a while, Hopper having shown no sign of further speech, he said, “Expecting me, were you?”
“‘Why, yes.” Hopper drank again and wiped his hairy upper lip. “A gentleman’s got to have a reason for paying attention to persons of—well, persons like me. You were right to pick on me, being the sexton an’ all, with the worst gales of the winter yet to hit an’ such a lot o’ youngsters at sea since the war … How d’you find my rum?”
“Good, good!” Neville exclaimed. He had meant to ask what sextons and young sailors had to do with what they were talking about, but the change of subject drove the question out of his mind.
“Thought you’d say that, you being a drinkin’ man an’ all. It was sent by the one who makes it, over in the West Indies. Black as his name, is Mr. Coffey, but as good a pal as any and better than most. Good teacher, too.”
“You sailed mainly in the West Indian trade, isn’t that right?” Neville achieved.
“West Africa, South America too. But mostly the West Indies, yes.” Draining his mug, he signaled Emily for refills and added at least as much rum as before.
“Well, anyhow, I shan’t mind to help out—if you make it worth my while. I was never a rich man. Folk call me cap’n, but I never was, only first mate. All I brought back was what you see on these walls—and Emily, o’ course. Cast ashore here in the end, where most as call themselves sailors never had more’n shoal water under their keels. Turn white as milk, they would, if they had to sweat through a hurricane like what wrecked the Jenny Rhodes on the Tortuga coast. Going back a bit, that is …”
Neville let him ramble on, covertly studying Emily the while. Could he bear to wake every morning for the rest of his life and see that head on the pillow next to his? Well, of course it needn’t come to that. Once a child was safely born—even sooner, maybe: once she was pregnant, they could sleep in separate beds or better yet separate rooms.
This rum was having the same extravagant impact on his imagination as the brandy he drank at home. Ideas for investing the proceeds from the house spawned like blowflies. Moreover, there was no reference in his mother’s will to the continuance of the marriage past the baby’s birth. So long as it was born in wedlock, that would suffice. At the earliest convenient opportunity, why should divorce not follow?
Yet there was something not altogether unattractive about quasi-masculine Emily, despite her likely touch of the tarbrush. Indeed, over the past weeks he had come to view her face, her body, in a new light, a new context. Was it because he felt grateful for her mere existence, his key to escape the prison his mother had decreed? No! Of a sudden it came to him.
It was her stillness. It was amazing. It was mesmerizing. It was riveting. She sat like a brown stone carving on the hard ugly settle, without the slightest hint of motion. Until—
“More tea!” Hopper commanded. The kettle proved to be empty and she went for fresh water; out of sight a pump creaked. He for his part didn’t wait for her return, but spilled yet more rum equally into the two mugs and drank half his own portion neat.
Neville dared not imitate him. The liquor was revealing its full potency. Were he to remain much longer he might disgrace himself. If Hopper wouldn’t come to the point, he must be brought to it. Emily hung up the full kettle, mended the fire, and resumed her immobility; Hopper interrupted his reminiscing for a fit of wheezy laughter; and Neville seized his chance.
“Well, Captain! As I’m sure you realize, I do fully intend to make it worth your while to help me. You imply that you understand my situation?”
Hopper nodded. His expression grew calculating, almost sly. Taking a stubby clay pipe from his pocket, he frayed a twist of tobacco and tamped its bowl.
“Well, a solution presents itself.” In instant retrospect Neville wondered whether that made sense. He hastened to clarify.
“One can’t be sure what the house will fetch, but it ought to be enough for a decent place in London, even if it has to be out of the fashionable swim. One might have to rent, but there are advantages. I’ve thought it all through. Not had much else to do recently, to be candid.” He forced a harsh laugh. Was he making his point? Hopper was looking puzzled.
Or was he merely drunk? That would be unbearable. Neville licked his lips, glancing at Emily and marveling anew at her composure. It was as though she hadn’t even realized she was the subject of discussion. He said, “Naturally one would prefer a boy, but—”
Hang on. I haven’t got to that part of what I’m trying to say.
Hopper shrugged. “When you’ve been at sea as long as I have, you stop caring about such matters. I’ll help regardless.” Pipe ready, he stretched a splinter to the fire.
“That’s very—very civil of you,” Neville responded, wishing his tongue weren’t trying to utter more irrelevant phrases, wishing his eyes weren’t overlapping like an out-of-focus stereopticon. And what had that nonsense been about sextons and young sailors? “Well, then, as soon as Emily can be persuaded—”
“Emily? What of her?”
Obviously far more used to the violent rum, Hopper, smoke-wreathed, was alert on the instant. Alert and—and threatening?
“Well, there does have to be a child before I can inherit, but it doesn’t need to be a boy … You said you knew! You said everyone in this place has heard about my mother’s will!”
Hopper stared for a long moment. Then he began to chuckle.
“And here I thought I knew what you’d come for! I was a long way off course, wasn’t I?”
He tipped the bottle; finding it drained, he thrust it at Emily, who took it and went for another.
Neville’s brain was awhirl. What had gone wrong? This cheating devil wasn’t even going to consider letting Emily rescue him from the hell his mother had decreed!
Also, at the edge of his mind, half-registered phrases surged like sullen waves against this hurtful coast: been at sea as long as I have—help you regardless …
Implicit meanings throbbed and festered.
The girl returned. Poised to uncork the fresh bottle, Hopper said, “Well, Emily’s mine, o’ course. Even if I made her over—which maybe I could!—she wouldn’t be any use to the likes o’ you. And here I was, so sure you’d approached me because …”
Neville was no longer listening. Two doors had slammed across his ears.
First: this horrible man had just said he could make Emily over and he wasn’t going to. Because, second: She wouldn’t be any use to the likes o’ you!
In the overtones of that phrase he reheard all the insults he most feared because they held most truth.
And Hopper was grinning! Grinning to show his filthy broken teeth! And saying, “Never mind, sir! Something to better suit your needs may well turn up!”
But I don’t want “something”! I want Emily! Docile, pliant, not as attractive as a boy but nearly, and he says—he thinks—he …
Neville thrust his chair back so hard it fell over. The shock of finding himself upright conspired with alcohol to dizzy him. Behind his eyes fury exploded like a Bengal light, all red. Howling, he rushed at a wall display of masks, and knives, and spears.
Hopper cried out, tried absurdly to parry with his pipe, could not deflect the blade that pierced his chest.
Blood spurted. Much fell on the open pages of the hymnal.
And Emily did nothing. Absolutely nothing whatsoever.
That was what dragged Neville back from the remoteness of rage to the real world. He found himself staring at Hopper, slumped in his chair with hands curved into despairing claws, showing how he had spent his last energy on a futile attempt to tear loose the spear. His gaze was drawn unwillingly from drop to splash to smear of the blood that had spattered across the table, across the book …
Open at a hymn whose number he could n
ot read, for redness covered it, and part of the text as well. The first verse, however, remained unsmutched, and the moment Neville set eyes on it he realized this was what belonged to the tune Hopper was forever humming or whistling—
Had hummed. Had whistled.
Still incapable of accepting the reality of what he had done, he sought transient refuge in a whispered recital of the words:
“O, wondrous appearance of Death!
No sight upon Earth is so fair.
Not all the gay pageants that breathe
Can with a dead body compare.”
Morbid, he thought to himself. Morbid …
After a while he recovered enough to wonder why Emily had betrayed no reaction to the death of her—
Her father? Her lover, keeper, protector?
A word more laden with terror than any of those loomed suddenly in his mind.
Resurrector.
In the West Indies did they not tell certain—tales? Henry had mentioned …
He looked at Emily, composed, emotionless. And he knew. Why she was no good to the likes of him, who needed to father a child. Why to gain the counterpart of her that Hopper assumed him to desire he would have been well advised to appeal to a mariner turned sexton, on a coast where many young sailors were cast ashore by winter storms.
What had made Hopper call Mr. Coffey a good teacher.
When he had finished screaming, at least for the time being, he tore open the door of the cottage and fled coatless and bare-headed through the teeming rain. Eventually a constable came to investigate because of what he sobbed and moaned in earshot first of embarrassed passersby, then Mrs. Peck, who donned her coat and seized her gamp and ran for help.
Until that time, though, Emily did nothing. Absolutely nothing. Though afterward the only deed that now was left to her.